Philae, being accounted one of the burying-places of Osiris, was held in high reverence both by the Egyptians to the north and the Nubians (often referred to as Ethiopians in Greek) to the south. It was deemed profane for any but priests to dwell there and was accordingly sequestered and denominated "the Unapproachable" (Ancient Greek: ????????).[8]

The last gasp that Osiris would make is as long gone cough in life scattered and returned piecemeal from his gone non-coffin death ---before horus was even concieved--- may impermeate the molecules of "Philae"

Close-up of the region containing Philaeâs primary landing site J. The mosaic comprises two images taken by Rosettaâs OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 14 September 2014 from a distance of about 30 km. The image scale is 0.5 m/pixel and the image covers about 1 km square. The circle is centred on the landing site and is approximately 500 m in radius.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team

The folklore has it that each time you take a breath it contains some of the atoms/molecules from the last breath exhaled from Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Ghengis Khan, or for that matter just about any famous person who died a long time ago.

The example quoted is most usually Julius Caesar, and the tale is often known as the "Caesar's Last Breath" phenomenon.Insert Osiris/moses/jesus/mohammed etc,etc...

Strange as it may seem, this is true! Admittedly some assumptions are made in the reasoning, but basically it is true. Incidentally, it isn't something specific to Julius Caesar or to any other person who has lived, but it's simply a statement that we all breathe the same air, in the same sort of way that a dozen people stuck in a lift all breathe the same air.

Although it seems extraordinary, this business about the "same atoms" is really just because the actual molecules of air are extremely small. If they were just "very" small it wouldn't be true, but they are even smaller than that, resulting in singular molecules being very well mixed.

The actual calculations: Assuming Julius Caesar's last breath was one litre of air, it would have consisted of about 1022 (exp) (1000000000000000000000) molecules. As he died a long time ago and the air has been all mixed up since then, and atoms don't go away, those molecules are assumed to have been evenly spread throughout the entire Earth's atmosphere, a total of about 5.1x1018Kg of air, a total of somewhere around 1044 (1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000) molecules. These are very approximate figures, but it's got a certain sense to it in the same sort of way that you know about how many trucks weigh the same as a ship!

So, when you divide it out, it turns out that in the average breath you take, there's a good chance of it containing a molecule or two which was once part of the last breath of Julius Caesar.

This is no reason for concern, so don't hold your breath! Having been stuck in this lift for so long, all of us, the human race, we can expect to be breathing each others' air!http://www.zyra.tv/lbreath.htm

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

Wook said he wouldn't hold his breath on improv until EYE showed him "...a couple molecules..."

just kidding.

The input comets make is non-reciprocal to any possible Osirian/jesus/grishnash output.
Therefore the osirian is clearly ceremonial and molecular / quantum interfacing of being scattered and returning like a molecular lost sheep/molecule.

Quote:http://keithlaney.net/SMF/index.php?topic=15629.0
Today, NASA held a press conference to discuss what happened when Comet Siding Springs buzzed Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. An international fleet of Mars orbiters observed the encounter using a variety of cameras, radars, and other sensors. Among many findings, the highlight was a "spectacular meteor shower" detected by NASA's MAVEN spacecraft. MAVEN did not actually see streaks of light in the Martian atmosphere--the spacecraft was sheltering behind the body of Mars during the comet's flyby. But when MAVEN emerged, it found a glowing layer of Mg+ (a constituent of meteor smoke) floating 150 km above the planet's surface:

The "smoke" was made of ionized magnesium and other metals shed by the disintegrating meteoroids. The data are consistent with "a few tons of comet dust being deposited in the atmosphere of Mars," says Nick Schneider, the instrument lead for MAVEN's Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph at University of Colorado, Boulder.

The actual calculations: Assuming Julius Caesar's last breath was one litre of air, it would have consisted of about 1022 (exp) (1000000000000000000000) molecules. As he died a long time ago and the air has been all mixed up since then, and atoms don't go away, those molecules are assumed to have been evenly spread throughout the entire Earth's atmosphere, a total of about 5.1x1018Kg of air, a total of somewhere around 1044 (1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000) molecules. These are very approximate figures, but it's got a certain sense to it in the same sort of way that you know about how many trucks weigh the same as a ship!

So, when you divide it out, it turns out that in the average breath you take, there's a good chance of it containing a molecule or two which was once part of the last breath of Julius Caesar.

"A human on the surface of Mars might have seen thousands of shooting stars per hour, possibly a meteor storm." He further speculated that the meteor shower would have produced a yellow afterglow in the skies of Mars because the meteor smoke was rich in sodium ions.

Jim Green, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington DC says there was a lot more comet dust hitting Mars than researchers expected, pre-flyby. Radars onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft and NASA's Mars Reconnassance Orbiter also detected signs of meteor-related ions. MAVEN and the other spacecraft are continuing to collect data as the atmosphere of Mars recovers from the encounter. Stay tuned for updates.

RPC consists of five instruments on the Rosetta orbiter that provide a wide variety of complementary information about the plasma environment surrounding Comet 67P/C-G. (Reminder: Plasma is the fourth state of matter, an electrically conductive gas that can carry magnetic fields and electrical currents.)

The instruments are designed to study a number of phenomena, including: the interaction of 67P/C-G with the solar wind, a continuous stream of plasma emitted by the Sun; changes of activity on the comet; the structure and dynamics of the cometâs tenuous plasma âatmosphereâ, known as the coma; and the physical properties of the cometary nucleus and surface.

But one observation has taken the RPC scientists somewhat by surprise. The comet seems to be emitting a âsongâ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the cometâs environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased by a factor of about 10,000.

The music was heard clearly by the magnetometer experiment (RPC-Mag) for the first time in August, when Rosetta drew to within 100 km of 67P/C-G. The scientists think it must be produced in some way by the activity of the comet, as it releases neutral particles into space where they become electrically charged due to a process called ionisation. But the precise physical mechanism behind the oscillations remains a mystery.

âThis is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening,â says Karl-Heinz.

RPC may also be able to help in tracking Philaeâs descent to the surface of 67P/C-G on 12 November, in tandem with the landerâs on-board magnetometer, ROMAP .

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Description
Artistâs impression of the Rosetta orbiter deploying the Philae lander to comet 67P/ChuryumovâGerasimenko. After an extensive mapping phase by the orbiter in AugustâSeptember 2014, a landing site will be selected for Philae to conduct in situ measurements in November 2014. The image is not to scale; the Rosetta spacecraft measures 32 m across including the solar arrays, while the comet nucleus is thought to be about 4 km wide.Id 300446

The picture taken with the navigation camera on Rosetta and released by the European Space Agency ESA shows a raised plateau on the larger lobe of Comet 67P/ChuryumovâGerasimenko. It was captured from a distance of 9.8 km from the center of the comet (7.8 km / 4.8 miles from the surface) Oct. 24, 2014. On Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014 the Philae lander will be detached from Rosetta to land on the comet. (AP Photo/ESA)

Quote:A European probe Wednesday made the first-ever landing on a comet in a quest to explore the origins of the Solar System, but there were concerns over whether it was fastened securely enough to carry out its mission.

The European Space Agency (ESA) said the robot lab, called Philae, had touched down on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in a high-risk manoeuvre more than 510 million kilometres (320 million miles) from Earth.

"Philae is talking to us," said Stephan Ulamec, the lander's manager said at the end of the lander's seven-hour descent from its orbiting mothership. "We are on the comet."

But the announcement was soon followed by worries that Philae may have landed in soft material and was not properly attached.

At the ESA's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, a crowd of scientists, guests and VIPsâincluding the two Ukrainian astronomers who first spotted the comet in 1969âcheered at the announcement of the landing, the centrepiece of one of the riskiest projects in space exploration.

"This is a big step for human civilisation," said the agency's director general, Jean-Jacques Dordain.

"Our ambitious Rosetta mission has secured another place in the history books," he said. "Not only is it the first to rendezvous with and orbit a comet, but it is now also the first to deliver a probe to a comet's surface."

Scientists hope the lander, equipped with 10 instruments, will unlock the secrets of cometsâprimordial clusters of ice and dust that may have helped sow life on Earth.

Getting from Earth to a comet that is travelling towards the Sun at 18 km per second was a landmark in space engineering and celestial mathematics.

The 1.3-billion-euro ($1.6-billion) Rosetta mission was approved in 1993.

Rosetta, carrying Philae, was hoisted into space in 2004, and took more than a decade to reach its target, which it did in August this year, having used the gravitational pull of Earth and Mars as slingshots to build up speed.

Philae was designed to settle down at a gentle 3.5 km per hour, firing two harpoons into the hope that the comet surfaceâa complete unknownâwould give it grip.

Ice screws at the end of its three legs were then to drive into the low-gravity comet to stop the probe bouncing back into space.

In a final health check before separation, a problem was detected with the small thruster on top of Philae that was designed to counteract the recoil.

And after landing, questions arose whether the craft was secured.

"There are some indications that they (the harpoons) might not have been fired, which could mean that we are sitting in soft material and we are not anchored," said Ulamec.

"We have to analyse what is the actual situation."

Two decades

Rosetta stands as a landmark mission in space, both for its complexity and length.

Turning slowly around "67P" since August, the spacecraft has made some astonishing observations.

The comet's profile somewhat resembles that of a rubber bath duck, but darker than the blackest coal, and with a surface gnarled and battered by billions of years in space: an extremely difficult target to land on.

Philae's work programme includes drilling into the surface of comet "67P" and analysing the sample for telltale isotopes in water and complex carbon molecules.

It has enough battery power to provide about 60 hours of work, but can continue until March with a solar recharge.

It accounts for about a fifth of the mission's total expected data haul from the marathon mission.

Rosetta will continue to escort the comet, scanning it with 11 instruments, as it loops around the Sun and makes its closest approach next year.

Quote:Until 12 November 2014, Philae remained attached to the Rosetta spacecraft after rendezvousing with comet 67P/ChuryumovâGerasimenko. On 15 September 2014, ESA announced Site J, named Agilkiain honour of Agilkia Island by an ESA public contest,[11] on the "head" of the comet as the lander's destination.[12]

Philae detached from Rosetta on 12 November 2014 at 08:35 UTC, landing seven hours later.[13][14] A confirmed landing signal was received just after 16:00 UTC.[15]

A final test before descent showed that the lander's thruster was not working correctly.[16][17] Philae's touchdown on the comet 67P/C-G was confirmed on 12 November 2014, 16:08 UTC. In an update from the LCC in ESA's live stream at 16:42 UTC, it was announced that analysis of telemetry indicated that the landing was softer than expected, that the harpoons had not fired upon landing, and that the thruster had not worked.[18][19][20]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

[move]Initial data from the spacecraft indicated that it lifted off again, turned and then came to rest.

[/move]

SchrÃ¶dinger's Philae

Land??? /Not/ Land!!!

Quote:The landing by the washing machine-sized crafter after a decade-long journey required immense precision, as even the slightest error could have resulted in stellar calamity.

Indications were that the spacecraft touched down almost perfectly, save for an unplanned bounce, said Stephan Ulamec, head of the lander operation.

[sup]"Today we didn't just land once[/sup]. [sub]We maybe even landed twice,"[/sub] he said with a chuckle.

Ulamec said thrusters that were meant to push the lander, called Philae, onto the surface, and harpoons that would have anchored it to the comet failed to deploy properly. Initial data from the spacecraft indicated that it lifted off again, turned and then came to rest.

Scientists were still trying to fully understand what happened and whether those failures would affect the lander's ability to remain on the comet, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But so far, most of the instruments were working fine and sending back data as hoped, Ulamec said.

"Tomorrow morning we should know a lot more," he said.

The landing team at mission control in Darmstadt had to sweat through a tense seven-hour wait that began when Philae dropped from the agency's Rosetta space probe as both it and the comet hurtled through space at 41,000 mph (66,000 kph).

During the lander's descent, scientists were powerless to do anything but watch, because its vast distance from Earthâmore than 300 million milesâmade it impossible to send instructions in real time.

So it bounced once off the "softer than expected" landing surface,
then dropped back down.
Harpoons failed, but it remained on the comet.
The harpoons were to make sure that it did not bounce off upon impact,
and to anchor it to the surface,
with the leg screws ... which will not screw into "softer material" ...
More gravity than they expected?

They may have been lucky to hit "softer material".
Or maybe Philae plunked into an area of porous loose collapsible material,
icy dust?
icy accumulated small debris loosely piled in a deep depression?

"Soft material" suddenly becomes fascinating.

Maybe they could have tried a ... "reverse panspermia" experiment.
Just for the heck of it.
A pre mixed nutrient rich solution full of fungal biomass impregnated right into the comet's
"soft material"

Check and see if it is still alive a few years later.

It sure is exciting and amazing that the science teams accomplished the task.
The love soaked aliens just happenstance to be observing the mission ...
are certainly amused at the true irony of the whole affair
in the context of the galactic space travel corridors so frequently used by so many.

I will remember this day.
As the Philae probe landed on an ice cold remote comet,
I was on a an ice cold {but thawing} very remote mountain creek rock bar
and found a spectacular botryoidal diopside specimen,
right on top of the bar ... in the thawing "softer material".
Explorers ... both at the edge of nowhere.
A little later when I slipped and fell tough ... I did not land on "soft material",
and I did not bounce.

So it bounced once off the "softer than expected" landing surface,
then dropped back down.
Harpoons failed, but it remained on the comet.

Nope

A quantum improv that keeps on giving new material!

[move]Further analysis indicated that the lander had [sup]bounced twice[/sup] and landed three times[/move]

Land! / Not / Land!! / Not / Land!!!

Quote:Philae remained attached to the Rosetta spacecraft after rendezvousing with comet 67P/ChuryumovâGerasimenko until 12 November 2014. On 15 September 2014, ESA announced Site J, named Agilkia in honour of Agilkia Island by an ESA public contest,[16] on the "head" of the comet as the lander's destination.[17]

A series of four Go/NoGo checks were performed 11â12 November 2014. One of the final tests before detachment from Rosetta showed that the lander's cold-gas thruster was not working correctly, but the "Go" was given anyway, as it could not be repaired.[18][19] Philae detached from Rosetta on 12 November 2014 at 08:35 UTC, landing seven hours later at 15:35.[20][21] A confirmed landing signal was received at 16:03 UTC.[1][22]

An analysis of telemetry indicated that the landing was softer than expected, but that the harpoons had not deployed upon landing, and that the thruster had not fired.[23][24] The harpoons contained 0.3 grams nitrocellulose which were shown by Copenhagen Suborbitals in 2013 to be unreliable in a vacuum.[25] Further analysis indicated that the lander had bounced twice and landed three times; the first bounce lasted two hours and may have been one km high; the second lasted seven minutes.[26][27] Philae sits askew on two legs, leaning on a rock in partial darkness as much as a kilometer from the first landing spot.[28][29] The limited sunlight will constrain Philae's activities, at least in this region of the comet's orbit, since the battery cannot retain a charge for long without illumination of the solar panels.[28][29]

Land Not

What says reality of the event to transpire as a possible First EVER!

Summary:
Failed Thruster Failed Harpoons Failed Ice Screws

Completed Landing/3 = .333 Landings.

[sub]Improv must dispense with the possible moments before the actual like shaking a x-mas present to guess what's inside.

shake...shake...shake...yahtzee!!!
[/sub]

[move]SchrÃ¶dinger's Philae = ~.333[/move]

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

Quote: As the contest to name the landing site on comet 67P/C-G draws to a close, we took another trip into the mission's past, this time chasing the origin of Philae's name. While the name of Rosetta was conceived within the team that defined the mission's science objectives back in the late 1980s, the name of its lander, Philae, has a different origin.

In fact, the name Philae is the result of another contest that was held one decade ago, shortly before the launch of Rosetta in 2004. The competition, which was open to young people aged 12 to 25 in the countries contributing to the development of the lander, was won by an Italian student, Serena Olga Vismara from Arluno, near Milan.

âI learnt about Rosetta and the contest to find the name for the lander thanks to a newsletter I received from ESA. In fact, as soon as we had an internet connection at home, that same year, I visited the ESA website and subscribed to the newsletter to stay up to date on ESA's activities,â she said.

Ten years ago, Serena was a fifteen-year-old high-school student with a keen interest in all things space. Now, this interest has crystallised, as she is about to complete her Master's degree in space engineering at the Politecnico di Milano.

For Rosetta's lander, she suggested to adopt a name, Philae, that follows the same Egyptian theme that inspired the mission's name. Philae is an island on the river Nile, in the south of Egypt, where archaeologists found an obelisk that was key to deciphering the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta stone.

The obelisk discovered at Philae, located at the Kingston Lacy house in Dorset, England. Image source: Eugene Birchall, Wikimedia Commons

âI decided to take part in the contest just for fun actually, I did not expect to have much chance of winning since the contest was open to so many young people and to other countries also,â Serena said.

But her idea was very powerful. The bilingual inscription found on the Philae obelisk â in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in ancient Greek â provided nineteenth century scholars with additional evidence to interpret the text written on the Rosetta Stone. Eventually, they could decode the ancient language of Egypt and unravel many mysteries about this thousand-year-long civilisation. This story captures very well the theme of the Rosetta mission, and particularly the synergy between lander and orbiter in studying comet 67P/C-G and unlocking its secrets.

So Philae was selected as the lander name and, as a prize, Serena was invited to Kourou, in French Guyana, to see the launch of Rosetta, which was planned for 26 February 2004. However, due to technical issues with the launcher, the launch was delayed to 2 March, which sadly meant that she could not witness the event.

âI had the opportunity to visit the preparation facilities and the Jupiter control centre and I remember everything quite well, but unfortunately I remember well also the disappointment when the launch had to be postponed and I could not see it because I had to come back to Italy,â Serena said.

During the past ten years, she has been following Rosetta's progress and is now looking forward to the landing, which at the time she thought was the most exciting aspect of the mission.

âAnd I still think it is,â she added, âbecause it is like discovering another world.â

After a long journey, Rosetta has now arrived at its destination and is about to deploy Philae on the comet's surface on 12 November.

âI will follow the landing for sure and with fingers crossed hoping that everything will go as planned,â said Serena. âAnd then I will wait for the results of the mission to improve my knowledge about comets!â

Quote:Further analysis indicated that the lander had bounced twice and landed three times;
the first bounce lasted two hours
and may have been one km high
the second lasted seven minutes.
Philae sits askew on two legs,
leaning on a rock in partial darkness
as much as a kilometer from the first landing spot.

I have a degree of difficulty believing that the lander bounced a "kilometer high" ...
and remained aloft for 2 hours
however ...
OK ... the lander is a Pinball Wizard in slow motion.

That is some hot ice ... rolling the dice.
Banked the 8 ball of the side slowly, back into the cue ball, then into the corner pocket.

And the lander didn't land upside down, or in another bulk of "soft material",
or bounce off into space ...

You can just see it ... tumbling end over end in slow motion for two hours

Give that comet a medical marijuana prescription

That comet has gravity between it's legs... it must have testicles ... comet cojones

Would the ice screws screw into rock? They keep saying "icy" but have given no proof of any kind of ice. The pictures look like rock. I think it is a rock, like most comets.

Rock doesn't fit the current theory even though all but one, maybe two, of the comets we have sent probes to have been rocky. The exceptions are still questionable concerning the amount of actual water there was on those comets. When the comet balances it's electrical charge with a more intense solar wind as it nears the sun, it loses rock as dust due to the electrical activity. Silicon dioxides would release oxygen and that would combine with the hydrogen in the solar wind. Now you have your water. The soft landing was into dust created by this activity. Occam's razor.

&quot;Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.&quot; --Aldous Huxley

Arnik:"Silicon dioxides would release oxygen and that would combine with the hydrogen in the solar wind. Now you have your water. The soft landing was into dust created by this activity. Occam's razor."

Arnik. Although the Albedo of 67P/C-G is blacker than coal Could this concievably make the coma at any point even briefly in time to appear RED?from either a space imager or from earth based observations.

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

Quote:Further analysis indicated that the lander had bounced twice and landed three times;
the first bounce lasted two hours
and may have been one km high
the second lasted seven minutes.
Philae sits askew on two legs,
leaning on a rock in partial darkness
as much as a kilometer from the first landing spot.

I have a degree of difficulty believing that the lander bounced a "kilometer high" ...

âI decided to take part in the contest just for fun actually, I did not expect to have much chance of winning since the contest was open to so many young people and to other countries also,â Serena said.

But her idea was very powerful. The bilingual inscription found on the Philae obelisk â in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in ancient Greek â provided nineteenth century scholars with additional evidence to interpret the text written on the Rosetta Stone. Eventually, they could decode the ancient language of Egypt and unravel many mysteries about this thousand-year-long civilisation. This story captures very well the theme of the Rosetta mission, and particularly the synergy between lander and orbiter in studying comet 67P/C-G and unlocking its secrets.

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

Quote:They keep saying "icy" but have given no proof of any kind of ice. The pictures look like rock.

When I sweep the latest pictures here, I get an image from my youth. I was in Massachusetts, and we had just had a deep snow. Back then, there was still a lot of coal-fired heating going on, with fine coal-dust permeating everything. As the snow gradually melted, the coal and road dust formed a concentrated 'crust' on the surface of the remaining snow. The comet surface looks much like my memories of that 'surface'...

(Remember, this is one of many comet trips around the sun, and the current surface has had repeated sublimation and refreezing episodes. It may originally have been, say, twice its current diameter.)

The Philae lander on the distant comet 67P has sent another stream of data back to Earth before losing power.
The little probe delivered everything expected from it, just as its failing battery dropped it into standby mode.
Philae is pressed up against a cliff. Deep shadows mean it cannot now get enough light on to its solar panels to recharge its systems.
The European Space Agency (Esa) fears this contact may have been the robot's last - certainly for a while.
A tweet from the official Philae lander account said: "I'll tell you more about my new home, comet 67P soonâ¦ zzzzz."

... a bit weary from excruciating observation of the limited images of the comet surface ...

one has to over magnify ... interpret ... guess ... but some things look clear.

Quote:Back then,
there was still a lot of coal-fired heating going on,
with fine coal-dust permeating everything.
As the snow gradually melted,
the coal and road dust formed a concentrated 'crust'
on the surface of the remaining snow.

That is good observation but I don't think the areas of what appears to be crusty ...
is crusted over just snow or ice bulk underneath.
There is hard packed material in some places, solid rocks in others,
with bowls of settled dust accumulation in others.
Some of the surface appears to be packed icy dirt with huge sublimation cracks,
other areas are noticeable with distinct packed rocky concentrations.

What I notice similar from memory are the giant jagged and irregular bulky massive chunks
of hard packed clay filled with various sized glacial rock
that break off from cliff sides of glacial till due to freeze and thaw action in giant cracks,
in the tall vertical glacial cliff depositions
that are exposed when cut away by the rivers
or along the ocean beaches.
These huge bulky masses of hard packed glacial till are strewn about the bases of the cliffs.
The clay eventually slowly erodes out and pools up as fine grained and settled material
beneath the bulky giant boulders of packed glacial till,
and individual rocks begin to fall out of the masses and into the accumulating dirt below.

So the comet in this regard of observation ... could be areas of higher ice-dirt content
to areas of
dense frozen hard packed clay and rock, to bulk hard rock mass.
It's a mixed bag.
... "snowy dirtball" is a bad description from the snuffy dirtball Pinnochio Plait.
There is a lot of hard packed and rocky material present.

I don't have any good images of just the giant masses I mentioned,
but I do have one of the cliffs of hard clay full of rock.
{The jade is coming out of the glacial till in this location}

Now Philae down to sleep
We pray a sunbeam soon to sweep
And if the hibernation break
We have more science yet to make 5:49 PM - 14 Nov 2014
534 Retweets 391 favorites ReplyRetweetFavorite

Quote:As I was wrapping up the final Philae press briefing yesterday (summarized here), Daniel Scuka, ESAâs Senior Editor for Spacecraft Operations came down to where I was writing, and asked me if Iâd be interested in returning to ESOC in the evening to watch with the ESA web team during what might be Philaeâs final contact with Earth. âReally?â I asked. I made eye contact with Steven Young across the table, and asked Daniel, âCan he come too?â

In the end it was three of us serving as social media eyewitnesses to the end of Philae, with Chris Lintott joining too, unaccompanied by his usual camera crew. We were there only to watch and tweet, in the same room as the ESA web team including Daniel as well as stalwart ESA bloggers Emily Baldwin and Claudia Mignone. That room was right behind the main mission control center. The control center was in the hands of mission manager Stephan Ulamec and flight director Elsa Montagnon, with another eight or so spacecraft operations engineers involved.

ESOC Main Control CentreWe arrived at around 9:30 in the eventing, prepared for what might be a long wait for Philae to regain contact. Philae has only a relatively weak radio antenna, and depends upon Rosetta for relay. The comet rotates once in twelve hours; Rosetta, on a 30-kilometer orbit, passes around it once in about two weeks. So there is roughly one opportunity for contact between Rosetta and Philae in each comet day, drifting a little later each day as Rosetta moves slowly in its orbit.

Had Philae been in the expected landing site, Rosetta contact times would have been certain, and the radio contacts would have lasted nearly half a comet day â six hours. As its location is not known, the contact times are uncertain. Contacts routinely happening earlier or later might give a hint to lander longitude on the comet, but what was actually happening on radio contacts, Stephan Ulamec explained to us, was that the lander made contact nearly an hour later than expected, and lost contact nearly an hour earlier than expected. Furthermore, the connection, when initially made, was wobbly, coming in and out of signal lock for as much as an hour before becoming strong (Montagnon joked that âthere is a tree in the wayâ). All of these indicate the landerâs view of the horizon is occluded by objects nearby.

While we waited, Daniel showed us some NavCam images heâd gotten from the flight dynamics team, showing what they thought was a bounce mark on the comet from the initial landing. But the images were a little confusing as they werenât co-registered. I offered to help register them a little better and annotate them, and this was the result:

Philae first bounce site from RosettaThe second image should actually contain Philae, post-bounce, but the pixels are 1.3 meters across, so itâs hard to say. For what itâs worth (probably not much), hereâs a guess at its location.

Rosetta regained contact with Philae at about 11:23 in the evening, local time (10:23 UTC, Earth Received Time). At first, the signal was wobbly but it stabillized in only a few minutes. Science data, stored onboard Philae from activities performed while it had been out of contact with Rosetta, streamed down to Earth via the orbiter. Housekeeping data came first, followed by COSAC science data. On Twitter, the SD2 drill team confirmed that their drill extended its entire distance out and then in again â a hopeful sign â though there is no way of knowing until results are analyzed whether it actually managed to reach the surface and grab a sample.

With all the science data off the lander, Rosetta autonomously sent Philae a command sequence to move. After several days of agonizing, the team had finally decided upon the movement action with the highest probability of success. They commanded the lander legs to lift the body by 4 centimeters, hopefully raising it a bit farther above the horizon, and then rotating the lander body 35 degrees to place the largest solar panel in a position where it could hopefully receive the most sunlight.

Telemetry confirmed that the lander moved as it had been commanded to do. There was no way of knowing whether the motion of the solar panel would increase available power, because by this time it was local night, with sunrise expected at around 6:00 UTC. But following the two commanded motions, Stefan Ulamec proclaimed the battery to be âgoodâ â I was not quite sure what this meant, only that he seemed pleased by the amount of power remaining.

Still, there wasnât much left. From our position behind the glass, Steven, Chris and I watched the engineers as they, in turn, watched a set of graphs on their screens â graphs that were declining steadily. Shortly after the motion was commanded, the main bus voltage plunged. We were told that it needed a minimum 21.7 volts to function, and after that, the end would be fast. My eyes misted, but I kept thinking of Huygens, 10 years ago. Against all odds, Huygens had survived for hours after the landing, long after Cassini had passed over its horizon, and after Saturn set beyond the Earth radio antennae that had been watching, just in case it survived landing. It had always troubled me that we hadnât watched Huygens to the end. For Philae, we could stand watch.

And yet, Philae was untroubled by its distressingly low power state. It carried on executing a series of science operations from its new position. The downlink signal remained strong. It acquired and returned ROLIS images from its new orientation. It began performing a third CONSERT ranging experiment. CONSERT is intended for ranging through the comet, so doesnât ordinarily get used when the orbiter is overhead, but its high-precision radar ranging would be useful for pinpointing Philaeâs uncertain landing location; a third complete session would complete a triangulation.

The link stayed strong for a while, and instruments continued to acquire and return data. But, inevitably, the end came. Around 1:30 in the morning local time (00:30 UT), Daniel told us that the lander had switched to standby mode due to low power. All instruments were shut down. Ulamec came in and told us that the lander had gone into a mode where its voltage dipped and it shut down and then climbed briefly and it booted and sent one data packet every few minutes. It wouldnât be long. But he was smiling, and in fact during this time there was frequent laughter inside the mission control center â Chris and I figured it was either gallows humor or just plain surprise that the lander was still going.

Ulamec came in again and said it had been a few minutes since the last packet â there might be one or two more, but that was probably it. But he was smiling. âWe are happy. We even can watch it falling asleep, which is a little bit sad, but it can give us data that we want to have.â And he was thrilled that the CONSERT ranging pass had run to completion.

At 1:44 local (00:44 UT), Elsa Montagnon came in and told us âthe link has broken. It is not far from the time we expected it to break. Rosettaâs radio receiver for Philae is, at the moment, always on. So it will be listening.â It was theoretically possible that the new solar panel position could even allow Philae to wake tomorrow after sunrise, though nobody really seemed to expect that to happen. If the solar power situation has improved, it will probably take several days of charging to achieve wakeup. So Rosetta will watch. But watching wonât prevent Rosetta from doing its science mission.

Quote:"We are privileged," Montagnon said a little bit later, "to have seen Philae going to sleep âlive.â"

I and Steven and Chris were tweeting all this, and Tweetdeck on my computer looked like a slot machine, "Don't Gamble with improv" the way notifications and retweets were spinning by. https://platform.twitter.com/video/playe...&width=500
The entire world was watching through us, to Philae, to keep it company as it passed into slumber. I showed this to Elsa Montagnon, and she was surprised and touched. The other engineers in mission control center also seemed surprised to hear how many people were following along.

As I tweeted my last picture, the engineers began shutting down the screens. It seemed a fitting way to end the evening. Lights out.

Itâs been quite a week. Philae had a rough landing, but a successful one, and managed to operate all of its science instruments. Although there were problems, I am confident that the data returned from this tiny mission will effect a major change in our understanding of comets. But weâll have to be patient. Good science takes time. Meanwhile, Rosetta is still fully functional and has more than a year ahead of it at least, to watch as the comet goes through perihelion next summer. And who knows? As the comet approaches the sun and its seasons shift, we may yet hear from Philae again.

And now for some acknowledgments. Thanks to Daniel Scuka for the invitation to ESA as social media, and to the other folks on the ESA web team including Emily Baldwin and Claudia Mignone, for their help, hard work, support, and at the end, amazing access to the final hours of our watch over Philae. Thanks, too, to ESA more generally, for stepping up their public outreach efforts on Rosetta and Philae; I donât know who deserves all the credit for that, but some at least goes to Mark McCaughrean, Fred Jansen, and Matt Taylor on Rosetta in Europe, and Claudia Alexander in the U.S. They can tell me who else I should thank! Thanks to all the Philae instrument teams who are keeping us informed with science updates on Twitter, in particular MUPUS, who is tweeting out science results from their experiment even as I write this blog entry!

I also need to thank my peers who were with me in the ESA press room. Space journalists are, first and foremost, space enthusiasts. Sure, there is competition among us to get the best stories. But during confusing and unfolding events like this one, I find space journalists to be open and cooperative, working together to make sure we all have the right, best stories. The writers and reporters huddled around the table in Darmstadt freely shared juicy tidbits of information with each other, collaborating to get more, better, more accurate information out to as wide an audience as possible. Jonathan Amos, Stuart Clark, Eric Hand, Chris Lintott, Ivan Semeniuk, Paul Sutherland, and Steven Young â without their generosity, I wouldnât have had nearly as much information to share with you, and more of the stuff that Iâd told you wouldâve been wrong.

And a HUGE thank you to Planetary Society members, whose generous financial support made the trip possible.

And thatâs it for me. Fittingly, my battery is dying on my laptop as I descend at the end of my flight to Los Angeles. Thanks for sticking with me for this adventure, and stay tuned for further news from Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Iâll be posting on planetary.org.

Vianova:
Yes, there are probably different 'structural areas' scattered around the comet. Some due to heating/cooling effects, and some due to how the comet originally assembled. It will be interesting to see how the comet reacts to increasing sunlight in the months ahead...

(I have seen the kind of 'lens' effects you mention. I was climbing the foothills of Mt Rainier, long ago, and was at the 'terminus' of one of its small glaciers. Toward the top, there was the kind of crust I mentioned. Toward the bottom, there was the ice/soil mixes and the ice 'lenses'. It was impressive. Although nothing like an Alaska glacier...)

Quote:Philae touchdown site seen by Rosetta's navigation camera. The first image in this sequence was taken on 12 November at 15:30 UTC, just before the lander's first touchdown; the second image was taken at 15:35 UTC, right after touchdown. The large red circle indicates the position of the shadow of the dust cloud caused by the landing. The third image in the sequence is the same as the second, with the likely position of Philae and its shadow highlighted. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM; pre-processed by Mikel Canania

4 November 2014
The site where Rosettaâs Philae lander is scheduled to touch down on Comet 67P/ChuryumovâGerasimenko on 12 November now has a name: Agilkia.

The landing site, previously known as âSite Jâ, is named for Agilkia Island, an island on the Nile River in the south of Egypt. A complex of Ancient Egyptian buildings, including the famous Temple of Isis, was moved to Agilkia from the island of Philae when the latter was flooded during the building of the Aswan dams last century.

The name was selected by a jury comprising members of the Philae Lander Steering Committee as part of a public competition run 16â22 October by ESA and the German, French and Italian space agencies.

Agilkia was one of the most popular entries â it was proposed by over 150 participants. The committee selected Alexandre Brouste from France as the overall winner. As a prize, Mr Brouste will be invited to ESAâs Space Operations Control Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to follow the landing live.

Although perhaps not quite as complicated as navigating Rosetta and Philae towards the comet, the task of choosing a name was by no means simple. More than 8000 entries from 135 countries were received in one week, showing great creativity and cultural diversity.

âThe decision was very tough,â says Prof. Felix Huber of the DLR German Aerospace Center, chair of the Steering Committee.

âWe received so many good suggestions on how to name Site J, and we were delighted with such an enthusiastic response from all over the world. We wish to thank all participants for sharing their great ideas with us.â

Participants proposed names in a variety of languages, both ancient and modern; some were even in Esperanto. There were also some interesting acronyms, curious sequences of digits, and onomatopoeiac words.

The entries covered a tremendous range of themes, from abstract concepts to the names of places on Earth. As with the winning entry, many suggestions echoed the Egyptian origins of Rosetta and Philae, named in recognition of milestones in decoding hieroglyphics, the sacred writing system of ancient Egypt.

Many names dated back to the history of our planetâs exploration, as those journeys into the unknown are the natural forebears of Rosetta and Philae. Mythological names from all over the globe were also proposed, including gods and goddesses of water, fertility, life and creation, relating closely to the fundamental themes investigated by the mission.

Other names were drawn from ancient history and prehistory, while others recalled milestones in the history of science, particularly the history of our understanding of comets.

The progress of the Space Age was also honoured by many entries. There were many references to science fiction, celebrating the work of Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke and Douglas Adams, among others.

Fictional characters from films, television shows, literary and musical works were also proposed. Some even referred to the virtual astronauts of the Kerbal Space Program, a popular online space exploration game.

Several entries acknowledged the Rosetta mission as an endeavour achieved through the cooperation of many European countries, while others referred to its groundbreaking technical and scientific achievements.

And, of course, there was no shortage of more humorous entries, many referring to the resemblance of the cometâs nucleus to a rubber duck, a potato or even the cartoon dog, Snoopy.

But the final choice is Agilkia, which is how the landing site on the comet will be referred to by ESA and its mission partners.

âAnd it couldnât be a more appropriate name,â comments Fred Jansen, ESA Rosetta mission manager. âThe relocation of the temples of Philae Island to Agilkia Island was an ambitious technical endeavour performed in the 1960s and 1970s to preserve an archaeological record of our ancient history.

âIn eight daysâ time, Philae will be deployed from the orbiter onto Agilkia. On 12 November, weâll be attempting a unique comet landing, an even more ambitious endeavour to unlock secrets of our most remote origins.â

About the landing
Rosetta will release Philae at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET on 12 November at a distance of 22.5 km from the centre of the comet, with a scheduled landing about seven hours later at Agilkia.

Taking into account the signal travel time from Rosetta on 12 November, confirmation of landing is expected on Earth at around 16:00 GMT/17:00 CET.

Live coverage of the key Go/No-Go decisions during the night of 11â12 November and of events through the day on 12 November will be provided by ESA TV, on the homepages of all partners, and on Twitter (#CometLanding). Press briefings each day either side of landing day will also be streamed live on the Internet at www.esa.int/rosetta and www.dlr.de

More about Rosetta
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. Rosettaâs Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES and ASI. Rosetta is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet. It is escorting the comet as it orbits the Sun and will deploy a lander to its surface.

Farewell Agilkia hello whom Agilkia | | |

Wiki:Three: symbol of plurality[edit]The basic symbol for plurality among the ancient Egyptians was the number three: even the way they wrote the word for "plurality" in hieroglyphics consisted of three vertical marks ( | | | ).
Triads of deities were also used in Egyptian religion to signify a complete system. Examples include references to the god Atum "when he was one and became three" when he gave birth to Shu and Tefnut, and the triad of Horus, Osiris, and Isis.[2]

?????\????? ?? ????\???? ?????? ?? ?????? (xaragna/Tili3na min Hofra/no'ra wa wi'i3na fi daHdiira)
We jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire (lit. we got out of a hole and fell down a slope)http://arabic.desert-sky.net/colloq.html

Along the vines of the Vineyard.
With a forked tongue the snake singsss...

[move]The photo on the left was taken [i]about ~3 [b]min33.3seconds before touchdown[/b][/i][/move]

This is a combination photo of two images released by the European Space Agency, ESA, Sunday Nov. 16, 2014. ESA says it provides strong indication that Philae touched down for the first time almost precisely where intended. The photo on the left was taken [i]about 3 min 34 sec before touchdown, the photo on the right 1 min 26 sec after by the navigation camera (NAVCAM) on board Rosetta as the orbiter flew over the (intended) Philae landing site on Nov. 12. The touchdown is seen as a dark area in the lower center of the right image which is considered as strong indication that the lander touched down at this spot (possibly raising dust from the impact). They were taken from a distance of about 15 km from the surface, Since landing Wednesday on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko some 311 million miles (500 million kilometers) away, the lander has performed a series of scientific tests. (AP Photo/ESA Rosetta/NAVCAM) [/i]

Quote:The European Space Agency says that its scientists are taking a bit of a break after working for four days around the clock since the pioneering lander Philae touched down on a comet.

ESA spokeswoman Jocelyn Landeau-Constantin told The Associated Press that most of the agency's scientific teams were resting Sunday "after several sleepless nights."

Nonetheless, some scientists were still busy evaluating the data that Philae sent down to ESA on Saturday before its depleted batteries forced it to go silent.

Philae landed Wednesday on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko about 311 million miles (500 million kilometers) from Earth, but then settled next to a cliff that largely blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels.